AMERICAN WOMEN AND AMERICAN BLACKS

Consider some of the rapid, far-reaching effects that came from transforming
the American economy to produce the goods needed for a modem
war. Two groups, for example, previously on the fringes of the workforceŚ
women and African AmericansŚnow found unprecedented opportunities
open to them. Some women who had not been employed before
1917 now took jobs, but a far larger group took new and better-paying
positions. In all, 1.5 million women took jobs in industries connected to the
war effort. In addition, countless numbers of women supported the war by
staffing and organizing relief agencies, selling war bonds, and promoting
patriotism in school and at work. In a war that moved toward "total
mobilization," women further helped the cause by conserving food at home.
As an editorial in Life magazine during the war reminded mothers, everyone
in the household could contribute to American victory: "Do not permit your
child to take a bite or two from an apple and throw the rest away; nowadays,
even children must be taught to be patriotic to the core."
For African Americans, the change was more sweeping still. Employers'
long-standing preference for native white or immigrant workers had to be put
aside in a country in which millions went into the military and in a world in
which emigration from Europe had halted. As the number ofjobs in factories
expanded, African-American men were permitted, even encouraged, to obtain
them. Since most members of this minority group lived in the rural South at
the start of the war, economic opportunity meant geographic exodus. Approximately
400,000 blacks went north to the major industrial cities of the Northeast
and Midwest; 60,000 migrated to Chicago alone. Black newspapers, such
as the Chicago Defender, reported on employment opportunities, and northern
black churches sent letters to southern congregations inviting their members
north to find jobs and share fellowship.
Prospective employers and railroads recruited blacks and channeled their
movement northward. The immediate reception for blacks was sometimes
hostile as white Americans reacted angrily to a black presence. Starting in
East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, then spreading to Chicago in 1918, race
riots erupted across the urban North. An ever growing roster of fatalities
marred the country's domestic peace and reminded blacks that leaving Jim
Crow in the South did not mean finding peace and freedom in the North.˝ŕÓ¸Ó˛Ř dle 12.1